An Instrument in Christ's Hands

Monday, May 4, 2015

You can't buy back those moments, you know? Some things you can revel in by Googling them over and over, scrolling through pictures of places or people. But there are moments and hearts and lives that will never pop up on your newsfeed or be real again anywhere but your heart.

I'm feeling again for the first time in a while. My hope is rested somewhere, and before it was free falling.

"not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. " - Rom 8:23-26

And that's salvation. What about tomorrow's hope, where there's no specific, catch-all verse offering hope? Freedom from worry? Perhaps (Matt. 6). But a foundation for my tomorrow, for the realities of my inner spirals and deepest inabilities to swim through life? That's harder.

Those moments, though, those un-Google-able ones? I feel them again now, with this new hope. I look back and they aren't just pictures they are people. And I find myself missing them before I'm gone. It's so clear, so obvious that God is in my becoming a nurse, this wonderful chance to love on the lovable and the unlovely alike.

I'm thinking more about the rest of life - the important parts and the people that fill it. And I'm realizing the incredible gift I've been given.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

How great is our God. He holds time in His hands, and so much more than just the beginning and the end, He holds the parts we can't see or feel, the beyond, the inside, the over and under and all that... is. That we can't describe. I'm pleading for wisdom to connect, to weave webs of grace and to leave traces of Jesus on every life I touch. It's not something I can do alone. I must commune with the Star-Flinger, the Master of time, the crafter of antiquity and all things glorious as well as of my own heart.

Tonight the air tastes heavy with the world, as if ten-thousand hopes have been laid on it. How I long to be a part of the gift of answers so that our deepest questions might win with our sure hope. So many hopeless hearts clang with the noise of unforgiveness, of broken promises. Yet He longs to sing the purest song in their weary souls. I hear that song whispered behind the crying of my own heart, behind my feeble attempts to reach stars myself.

And so I gently succumb to His work, and see beauty slowly crafted, so that my fingerprints look more and more like His. Because the morning does come and there is a glorious sunrise yet, filled with the sweetness of birdsong, and so many more hearts have the opportunity to sing with them. And there is yet opportunity to rest in His goodness. For me. For so many more.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

I think there are days when I forget to see the beauty. I forget to feel the rain. My inner, swirling world surrounds me from the inside out, and all I can see is the wetness of the hard ground beneath my feet. My feet, moving forward robotically, taking me from one task to the next. But then in the midst of the dankness of a thankless soul, fresh mist begins to fall, outside first, but then slowly seeping into the deeper parts of my being.

In the softness of the night I succumb to the tenderness of my Saviour as He shows me this scarlet cord wrapped around my thirsty heart. That pulsing, red, life-giving cord is scarlet with His blood, a lifeline to my soul. It's a cord of love, three-stranded, strong, with vessel walls of strength for me to hold upon and be rescued from my self-created despair. In that moment when I turn from my cold, hard streets and hold upon that cord of life, my spirit is lifted, my gaze turns to those beautiful things which He has given and is giving, and new hope begins to build.

That gentle mist now covers my enraptured face and my eyes catch glimpses of beauty on the rain-streaked branches, reflecting the evening light gladly. The music drifts through me. There is much yet to mend, but my heart is healed. My purpose set and joyous once more as I change my song to sing of the Life I've found again.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

After a long afternoon of studying and with a heart and mind bursting with all sorts of lovely things and nothing but wound care and measurement conversions to occupy my head, I find myself turning to this almost-forgotten,
strange little pastime of writing to the world at large.

That world keeps growing, swelling with all the joy and terror of the lives lived inside them, and I find myself caught in the middle. I'm learning, learning so very much, and yet I'm hard pressed to find a moment to actually think. All my thinking these days seems to be so planned, so pre-orchestrated, and even my time with my Saviour has pre-defined borders much of the time. Yet in these tiny in-between spaces I breathe deeply of the joys that seep down through the cracks and invade from paradise above.

Our lives, ultimately, are to be lives lived in service to others, for the edification and growth of our brothers and sisters in Christ and for the drawing into eternal joy of those not yet family. That thought is underscored by every gleam of morning sunlight, every branch reaching out for the air a little further, every dying petal fluttering silently, its perfume having lit up the world with beauty already. As my petals fall throughout life, may their fragrance have been put to good use!

Though my heart may not always soar, and some days it genuinely crashes in so many pieces at the bottom of the darkest cavern, yet will I strive for the glory of my King. So my immediate purpose may not be thunderous glory, but here it is while I am in the little things, in the aligning of margins in unfriendly documents, in the laughter found in taping shut a drawn-on wound on a sad-faced manikin, or in smiling at those on whom I'm privileged enough to learn my career.

The little girl with bouncing curls who dances past me, that's the song of my heart, and she reminds me of my purpose, how the King wants my delight fixed in him, how my breathing is for Him, how my thinking of myself must be for Him, how my delights and my sorrows must be for Him.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

I feel a little like a crazy woman. 6 more days. 2 more days of classes. 3 days of exams. 6 exams. Home soon. Miss home! Will miss BJ! So much to take in and spill out and work through and, as always, so little time.

Philosophy is good for me. I think I've always been a philosopher and never really realized it. All my workings through of the hilarity, insanity, and beauty of life, all entwine into a perfect philosophical knot, each part of which has a name I never knew before this semester.

But you know, this afternoon I was walking back to my dorm after a class on Sartre and his rather anti-biblical ideologies, and it struck me: The human being is very interesting concept.

I mean really. A being, made in the image of the Divine Creator, fully capable of choosing. That is rather a shocking idea.

So me, this little human being, is going to rush around with a lot of doing for the next few days and then it's on to the next thing for a few months. Then back to the craziness. :-)

Traveler of life, lover of Christ, joying in all that life gives, here I am. A twenty-something Canadian living in the States for nursing school - hopeful midwife to precious babies not yet dreamed of. Thoughtful among leafless branches against ashen skies, dancing in golden, sun-warmed springtime, looking up and in to the call the Lord has given me.